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CQX Open Source Project Ideas

There are 37 posts in the Coder Talk Introductions thread, that is a lot of CPU! Is there any interest in starting an open source project? Let's try to brainstorm something.

For myself, the first thing I wonder: would it be better to try do something with the massive amounts of scientific data coming in from various missions? That's a dream of mine but there are huge hurdles to understanding the data. Or would it be easier to something not-so-science-heavy for those of us that are coders first, and astronomy is just a hobby? I really liked the Image Mapping idea in the Mobile Forum. But I've noodled a bit with Android and figured out it's not for me, so I'll have to pass on that one.

There are 37 posts in the Coder Talk Introductions thread, that is a lot of CPU! Is there any interest in starting an open source project? Let's try to brainstorm something.

For myself, the first thing I wonder: would it be better to try do something with the massive amounts of scientific data coming in from various missions? That's a dream of mine but there are huge hurdles to understanding the data. Or would it be easier to something not-so-science-heavy for those of us that are coders first, and astronomy is just a hobby? I really liked the Image Mapping idea in the Mobile Forum. But I've noodled a bit with Android and figured out it's not for me, so I'll have to pass on that one.

If you have any ideas, throw it out there, let see what we can do.

How is the data currently organized? Do they already have someone who's really good with RDBMS to organize it, or are those who're better at the math simply storing it until they (or someone else) can figure out how to use the data later? One thing I learned with very large databases is that it's helpful to have a quick and easy way perform trail operations on random samples. Key to that, however, is building a routine into the database that extracts such samples. I found it helpful to generate a random number that's added to each line of data, which is then indexed and subsequently used in such pulls and other operations. That way, whether you selecting from the entire data set or records selected by one or more criteria, instead of having to randomize the data, you just sort on the random field and pick the first x records, where x is your sample size.

Data is a very nebulous word, and trying to make it useful to access is a huge issue that the International Virtual Observatory is working to solve, but in some cases the folks at MS World Wide Telescope are ahead of the game on.

If you can tell me what type of data you want to do what to, I can be more useful.

Recently I used Synthmaker in FLstudio. Its a program that where users can create custom syntesizers by linking basic buldingblocks (like oscilators and freq. filters). The user drag/drops components to a canvas and links them by drawing lines, thus creating new synts.

I was wandering if it where posible/usefull/intersting to create physics equvalent of this.

A user can drag some physics formulas (or concepts) into a canvas and link them.

I'm just thinking aloud. this is a brainstorm, and that means generating idea's. I hope this sparks someone elses imagination towards a good project.